She told me often when I was six, seven eight,nine and even ten that she used to read books, newspapers, journals (probably even shampoo labels), anything at all, every morning as she carries a breathing lump in her tummy—me. Growing up into a pensive, serious child,  my compounding curiosity was indulged with her providing a plethora of books. From giant, intimidating encyclopedias (I could barely understand but read on,still) to old, dusty fiction paperbacks to her interest in Greek mythology, she never ran out of things to tell me. How she told in a week the story of Goldilocks earning the rage of the three bears  and how I memorized it by ear when I was three or four, recited it in front of a throng of older kids in school. How her eyes glistened at that moment (I could not tell) but in retelling everything, her voice glows with just a bit of pride. She fed me fairy tales and in soaking in their magic, I found a dreamer in myself. I've always been a little different from other kids. A little too curious, precocious, mature, head in the clouds which I have maintained until now. She excitedly told me the story of how Thumbelina in her smallness had a larger than life adventure. How the last pig survived the wolf's bullying through his cleverness. How red riding hood looked dainty and pretty in her red cape. Or how tasty looking  her presents to grandma were. She read them all—every night—tirelessly as I held the warm milk I hated with all my naive heart at that time. I started writing for the school paper, eventually as a news and features writer. I did a lot of spoken poetry, orations, storytelling and speeches (mostly in school and some events) .Mom was in front row seats in all the writing and literary competitions I went to. And together with dad, they shut off the doubtful voices in my head real good.

I stopped writing in high school—when I was twelve. And for a long time, I wandered aimlessly with myself. To make matters worse, I was plagued with nightmares and an extreme sleep paralysis condition that heightened my fears. I often seriously thought I would die in my sleep. I totally got wrapped by my problems and forgot about writing and never got the chance to ask mom how she felt about that. But life paced itself differently when I was fifteen. One crazy dream and an insight in the shower later  and I began writing again. It was like I came from the bottom of a dry, dark well and someone wedged me with a rope back into light. I never looked back down the well, ever.

In all this history and flair for the literary, I go back to the fondness of the days and nights when mom was also my favorite storyteller who somehow put me in this direction, unknowingly. Now that I think about it, I always had an affinity with words. Like birds with the wind, like painters with their brushes. It comes as natural as breathing for me—maybe I should feel happy about that. Behind that deep connection was my mom and her stories that awakened my inner dreamer. One day, I hope to stack all the poems and stories, all the words I have ever written (good or bad) and hand it to her. Just like how she handed me this dream. I'd like to tell her I never stopped writing and probably never will. And in the very first page of that compilation, signed with my slanted signature are the words—*
I OWE IT ALL TO YOU, MOM, THANKS!

-Alex

My inner child,

Recently I have found myself crawling through those hazy archives of my past, when it was only you and the dirt on those endless afternoons. And I wonder to myself how much of these memories truly exist and how many blanks I may have filled in along the way. I try to formulate a hypothesis on this but my mind is preoccupied with the image of the mound of soil at the back of the garden. The one our sister swore was a buried lion – a truth you swallowed so readily. Since then you have moved house and dug a grave for the lion yourself, only this one was your best friend.

We have drifted you and I. I rarely see you. Sometimes in the midst of pills and drink I swear we cross paths but soon my heart thuds heavily and I do my best to just keep my feet and then you’re gone. I am now just a composite of lessons learnt and punishments served. A sum of all the times I broke a heart, failed a class and tripped on a stone. I look ahead to adulthood – I know we never believed we’d get there - we never needed to, but here we are. I don’t wear a suit, I don’t drive a car and I have no money. Beards don’t suit me and as things stand, it is unlikely I will become Batman. I would tell you that we’re not a failure – that I’m not a failure but the world tells us differently. We need a real career.

It is a tired cliché admittedly, but I do miss your innocence – your boundless inquisition into everything about you. The incessant inquisition still remains, but the plague of indoctrination-education and the scorn on your school friends soon puts up borders in your mind. You soon realise which questions are stupid, even if they are right to be asked. Cleverness soon becomes more than being able to tie your shoes. You must be strong, you must be brave, you must be ruthless.

I think back to how much we loved our mother and how it hurts now, to see her ignorance and her emotional frailty for all that it is. The day when your mother becomes human is truthfully one of the most frightening days to experience. Still, for you, those wonderful April shower mornings in the park are a refuge. Feast on those sandwiches, huddle together under the shelter of the slide and listen placidly to the rain hit the metal. Do not think for a moment of what needs to be done or what has been done. Live in the present before you get lost the cogs of causation.

Learn to fall in love. Not just with people but with animals. With words, with pictures, with colours and tones. Textures, sounds and imagery. Please never lose the wonder of lying in the grass and seeing a separate world. I know you don’t understand beauty, perhaps because you are beauty within itself. Perhaps only I can understand beauty because mine has been lost through these fatherless years of self-effacing thoughts and relentless hangovers. Perhaps it is only now that I grasp for beauty, in order to claw back some of what I have lost. Just to taste it again.

I wont keep you for much longer. I know you need to run and yell and play until the sun falls. I simply wanted to tell you that I love you. You are what I love about me, despite what may have been lost in the classrooms. I know now that I should get my head out of the screen and cast my eyes beyond my bank balance, so that I can see you in the distance and greet you as a friend. My old friend. I hope I get to see more of you after writing this, because I miss you and my brain is sometimes just so loud and I think you might be the only thing to quieten it. I am going to fall into bed and sleep dreamlessly under the covers now. If nothing else, I promise you that as you grow older, you will look forward to bed time!

Yours in complete awe,

A very confused person.

There’s this sudden peace growing in my psyche, the kind I haven’t felt in a long time accompanied by a person. I don’t know if it’s the way you laugh, the structure of your words and sentences, or the cleverness of your sarcasm, but there’s something about you which reflects the tapping of the soft rain against my windowsill in the middle of the night. When those thunderstorms you call nightmares come to destroy my dreams, your words act like a tranquilizer, sedating the anxiety; the fears of living and worry of the afterlife is the war I fight every day of my life, and you’re the only person I want by my side at the battlefield. Even if the people surrounding us are scared of dying or facing their fears, the stillness of my heart remains. There’s something about the tone of your voice at 3 in the morning that puts me at ease; something about the way you get infatuated with shows and songs, or people even, that I adore – oh so much. For a while, my heart has been set on the touch of your skin, feeling the vibrations of your laughter just inches away is my strongest desire. Your sarcasm is amusing to me and I crave hearing it under your breath as those brown (sometimes green) eyes lure me to you. You are what I’d like to call my personal form of *******; the drugs my mother thought were forbidden to speak of. Some say ignorance is bliss, but the unawareness of you is the biggest taboo and the existence of you is the greatest form of ecstasy I know.

Since I was a girl
I imagine great feats
of daring and cleverness to save
the village, city or world

The City inspires me
Streets of San Francisco sun
Bart rides blurring as I listen
to Swedish techno and imagine
the trailer to my film

Running to, running away
Catching in the act, driving
Getting hurt, getting up
Of course there's computer hacking
which I do with finesse
Something explodes
It's not me
I'm the first to realize what is really going on
and the first to enter the belly of the beast
everything depends on me as I move
quickly and my dialogue is clever
at the most dangerous moments

We end up
In a deserted warehouse with one gun
each and I outwit you and save the day
alone as everyone else shows up
I am an action hero

In a field of red roses by the lake,
A white rose calls up to the sun
With her beautiful petal scarf
And her cheerful smile
Over another field, a tulip stands sad
He is one in the crowd, no one special
“Smart,” some say, “too shy” others may
But he struggles, moving his cheek

The tulip looks at the ethereal rose every day
Wondering how such a flower grew from the floor
An angel’s tears of joy, he might think
A kiss from Gaia, he would have hoped

Tulip doesn’t know much of the rose
And fears never being able to embrace her
He feels that both have too much in common
But his inner parasites would hurt her
For a majestic rose that dances with the moon in the water
Such normal tulip will never have a chance
Her perfect stem is made of silk
His is damaged and made of paper

Still, the tulip dreams
Wishing one day to fly, as his roots would rip
Detaching from the floor, from his forlorn life
Flying towards the star reflected in the lake, where his solitude would end

The white rose doesn’t realize, still
How much he admires her strength, cleverness, and beauty
Until the tulip sends his seeds of love
In the form of this poem and painting

For a more radiant future he fights
Forever aligned with the Astraea of his heart
Because she glows in the night
Inspiring him to be better
And even if the rose doesn’t recognize the tulip
She should know that he is right there
In an everyday battle to talk to her
He is smart and shy, but eager to give all his petals to see her smiling for him

*****.

Twirling like the devil's baton
a cyclic cul de sac
'round the positronic menagerie,
speared from stem to stern, floor to ceiling,
arched bowed bent backs saddled ridden tools
adolescent ne'er-do-wells and prepubescent fools
all desiring to sit nowhere but by me,
by me, by me-

My friend of cosmic dawn, take my hand and
traipse like a runner in a blind alley.
Lead me to my quiet stead, walk and stamp about,
my cloven-hoofed associate, sarcastically devout,
and show me that everything in this whole world
is presented via legerdemain, deceitful cleverness,
but it cannot cure my lightheadedness, felt by me,
by me, by me...

I’ve been mistaken for a conquistador
When really I just break hearts by accident
There’s no evil in my deeds
And no wickedness in my words
I’m just looking for lovers who are lost

I’ve been trying to fix the unbroken
And all I do is break what can’t be fixed
There’s no cleverness in my words
And no thoroughness in my deeds
I’m just a lost soul looking for love

So you will know me by the trail of broken hearts
And the flower in my buttonhole
And that smug look on my face
And the searchlight in my mind
Aimed at nothing in particular

THE DOWRY WAS FOR FUTURE WIFE AND LIFE,
IT DID NOT GUARANTEE SUCCESS FOR YOU AND ME,
I COULD GIVE YOU SOME ADVICE - IT WOULD BE NICE
TO KNOW WHEN THEIR THROWING SHOES AND RICE,
GOD WILL PROVIDE AND COVER IF YOU HELP YOURSELF,
DO NOT RELY ON DESTINY OR THE BEING OF ANOTHER;
YOU MUST RE-INVENT EVERY DAY AND THEN PRAY
THAT THERE'S SOMETHING POSITIVE TO SAY,
TAKE HEED OF PLEASURE AND LEISURE FOREVER,
NOT IN PASSING BUT TO BE DONE WITHOUT ASKING,
YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN KEYS, SO USE THEM,
NOT JUST TO KEEP THINGS IN PLACE BUT TO OPEN
HEARTS AND MINDS AND CLEVERNESS THAT BINDS,
BE AHEAD, BECAUSE FORTUNE HAS MANY KINDS.

I prayed with light voices, but a burdened heart;
You are not here--that I am supposed to know of.
But still, my mind cannot accept that we are now apart.
I am despaired by my own hands, by my own love;
Your images keep shrouding me--you keep haunting me.
Your portraits shout your name, but none of ‘em is truthful;
They reject my bliss, though they told me I was beautiful.
I keep looking for you in the shades: but all I find is blueness,
And as daylight grows mature, I feel but scarce and clueless;
I am entrapped by my own wishes, and I can no longer write.
Ah, ‘tis over now--I should declare;
I walk home and sleep, and decide I should no more be in love--
Some sheer charms I might better not be.

I was running across the moors, and secretly hoped I would find thee there;
Thee with thy own giggles and mockery and childish wishes;
Thee with a resemblance of moonlit skies on thy face.
Thee with a thousand arches in thy brown eyes;
Eyes that were genuine, hopeful; with spirits that would not die.
And those lithe hands; and thy handful of full lips;
Thou always startled me within thy black jacket,
Yes, that black jacket with gruesome naughty little pockets,
Thou always asked me to chase around the bogs;
While peering naively into the hidden summer spider webs.
Thou woke me up with thy morn noises;
Thou wanted to tell me a tale of castles, friendship, and promises.
Thee with a thousand smiles, hopes, and legitimate fears;
Thee with the sweetness of a moonbeam, thee with one hundred kisses.
Thou wert like a lonesome butterfly at first;
And on a shiny day I but caught thee;
and weaved my colourful love onto thy plain nest.
Thou shined again, and I felt but merited;
As time passed, I grew hungrier for thee--and always delighted;
Thou wert a summer to a pleasant summer itself;
Thou made my heart warm, and my seasons magnified.
Even my lavenders were stupefied by thy cleverness;
They were warm always, to welcome and greet thee at night.
Ah, my darling, my half spirit, my sweet;
Thou owned the second spare of my green light;
Thou wert my frost at conned summers, and mild winters;
Thou wert the white snow I played with--and its evening rainbow!
Ah, and at times--thou wert like a nature among yon shrieking green grass;
I smiled always, as I entrapped thee within my clear glass.

I should twist this story away, and welcome him;
Welcome whoever shines through my love--in reality, and in dreams.
I know I hath to celebrate him behind the furnace;
I shall smile sweetly and charm him by my maiden’s face.
He hath a lovely aura as the unheeded stars;
And his steps are awkward, but stately as the moon’s.
He hath smooth and virile advantages about him;
He hath a weather, but still he hath not thy playful air.
He is serious, thou art more festive and thoughtful;
He is cordial, but I findeth him at times uninnate and insoluble.
Ah, Immortal, he liveth but in a cold bubble away from me;
And so you know, the love of him is but a love of pain;
Sometimes I want to find thy face in his poetry;
Sometimes I want to see again, but your fairness.
Thy heart is, as thou hath figured, widespread within me;
It ambushes me and glides me around like a cheeky star;
But as thou gazed into me,
I found that thy charms were absolute;
I pampered this notion of thee--as I still do;
Thou wert my nymphic and immortal dream;
Thou art my sane and insane ambition;
Thou art my sand, my boats, my sails!
Thou art the sea worth a thousand miles;
And I care not what foul and fuzziness thy soul might carry;
I shall purify thee, I shall endorse thee, I shall welcome thee into my lonely heart!
Ah, Immortal, I am but a spoiled of ruins and wreckage now;
As I woke up t'is very morn, I knew I wouldst not see you tomorrow.
And guess now--how shall I define our once glossy, faint Sofia?
I do not want to pronounce to Sofia, ah, our very dwellings, a goodbye;
I shall never pronounce such; and on t’is I shall care for thy sayings not--
As telling such wouldst indeed be a remarkable lie.
Instead, I should dream again, of being by your side;
I shall be the terrified mermaid--but thee--my gentle merman;
We shall swim across the sea and startle the aquatics by our depth;
And thereon I shall dream of myself cherishing you--and holding you in my arms;
As I pray and bow and submit the rhapsodies of my heart, all day and night.

Ah, but where is Immortal, Immortal, Immortal;
Without whom my heart is bleak; and winters are hard.
Ah, Immortal; by whom rains are pretty, and colours are magnificently saturated;
By whom storms are no more storms, and no more downpours are petty;
By whom lakeside houses are not cold, and slippery rocks are not frightful;
By whom birch trees shall sing, and honey bees shall farm away for hours.
Ah, Immortal, by whom my poetry stays alive, and fed tranquilly by yon earth;
Immortal, by whose lullabies I fall asleep among the midnight’s icy hearth.
Immortal, whom my heart values, and urges me to love;
Immortal, by whose side debris are whole, and ruins picture unity;
Ah, Immortal, by whose singing melodies are songs, and rhythms are but poetry.
Immortal, Immortal, Immortal, by whose words--the entire worlds are but Sofia;
And all merit and grace but belong to the romantic Bulgaria.
Immortal my entire darling; who taught me to see how the moon teases the sun;
And how the latter becomes fainted but mirthful, at t’is very realisation.
Ah, Immortal, Immortal, Immortal, by whose absence I feel but frightened.
Ah, Immortal, do you think I should hurry--shall I fleet and run?
I shall meet thee again tonight, around the corner by the lake;
Before such an eve grows genuine--causing the day to turn fake.
I should meet thee before everything is but feasted and pierced;
And I shall bringeth thee my midnight poems and soliloquy;
I shall embrace thee by my myths, and relish thee within my solitude.
I shall make thee remain by my side, and keep shady thy burly night;
I shall, perhaps, make thee my mirth itself--I shall keep thee warm, and safe, and bright.
Ah, Immortal, one who was always aired by my fresh recitations;
One who was entrenched in my tales of craze, atrocity, and vanity;
One who cried by me like a selfish child--but at times, became the radiance itself.
Ah, Immortal, one within whose palms the moon is transparent;
And the harmony of night becomes more possible;
Ah, my darling Immortal, who was once infatuated with my nights--and 'twas apparent;
Oh, my darling, my own darling, my very darling--how I hath only words to play with!

Where is but Immortal, Immortal, Immortal,
My jokes cannot sleep, and even my eyes choose to stay awake.
My heart feels absurd, as it is not calmed and soothed by him;
Even as I can sleep no more, I am but unable to edify him in my dreams.
Ah, where is my Immortal--for as I scurry outside, I cannot locate him;
While he is but the golden lock I need to deliberate my heart.
Ah, my husband, who owns but the charms heartbeat cannot describe;
Ah, Immortal, by thy words--thou knoweth, vanished worlds are real to me today.
The rush of your blood still, knowingly, flows within my breath;
You look like that little lad proudly standing by yon bridge faraway.
Immortal, my little sound, my eager song, my profound lilac;
How shall you ever know what you mean to my heart?
To me, you are more than any gold, brown silver, nor white bronze;
You are my tears, my growth, and the height of my winter;
You own the youth and throne my heart hath always longed for.
Ah, Immortal, no matter how hard thou hath defeated--and perhaps, betrayed me;
Thou art still more immortal than a thousand suns outside;
And more mature than t’is benighted winter as it already is.
Ah, Immortal, 'tis hath grown silent again, and I need to greet my lavish worlds;
But for you know--your scent shall remain better than the sun's on its own, and more lively.
Ah, Immortal, and while those winds shriek, and hop, and wail;
‘Tis your voice still, that I but imagine in my *****;
And while their spread and take rule of their wings;
Thou shalt remain by prince, my ruler--the one I choose to be my king.

My heart hath borne thee since I was in her womb;
My mother's chaste womb--and there, just there--
I had but been formed by her sheepish threads.
Ah, and thus I heart her like t’is-but not as much as I heart thee, perhaps;
If I doth dream of her; it meaneth I'd but dream of thee;
And thou knoweth--my dreams of winter shall be but one about thee;
About thee--my vigour, my shadow in my traces, my vengeful spirit.
Ah, Immortal, Immortal, Immortal; my century of blessings, my time
and poetry of such an endless eternity.
Ah, Immortal, in whose heart there was purity;
And in whose love I felt reified, and no such tyranny,
Ah, and t’is loss of thee perhaps means a life of illness;
A time of neglect, but a loss of my valid youth.
I want not to age, for thou art, thyself, young and ageless and immortal;
I want to dwell but only in yon Paradise of thee;
And be fueled solely but thy desire, and not anyone else's.
Ah, Immortal, I want to feel but the flavour of thy skin;
And be engrossed but against thy stomach.
I want to be thy lily, and thy novel rose that shall never wither;
Ah, Immortal, I want to be little again; and thy most awesome lavender.

And thy blame--such as t'is one, shall mean a brawl to my destiny;
And its glam is but my fiery--while insuperable--destruction.
As I promised thee--I shall not be weary, I shall not be sad;
But never shall I love, never shall I be satisfied.
Ah, Immortal, I shall never agree to love again;
I want to keep my love for thee; for whom I shall advocate my youth,
I want never to share my trembling love with anyone else.
As I hath loved thee just now, perhaps I shall love thee forever;
Ah, Immortal, as how it usually is, thou shall be the sailor-
And ever the painter, in our very own colloquial poetry!

Immortal, my grace, my perambulations, my ecstasy;
Immortal, my good, my one, my irrepressible;
I hath fulfilled thy wishes, at least at present, to bear t'is alone;
But for you know, that life without thee is no Paradise;
And even when I am dead, perhaps my soul shall never lie;
I shall wander the earth still--to look for thee, my tears and my lost love;
And insofar as thou remaineth away, I shall too stay on earth; and never ascend above.

Fatigue is setting in giving my affect a kind of relaxed
hereness, because there is very little energy for anything else
Tomorrow remains a mystery, but there will be a battle, I know
the forces will arrive, armed with ipads or paper or their phones
and their judgemental brains of varying sizes and capacities
I am tired, and I need to avoid the unecessary confrontation and most
especially desist from worrying about anything that isn't happening in the moment
the battery is low,  I have no grenades only a small shield and that's
not really enough to battle with, and really, I've always been out armed
and totally outnumbered and overpowered and yet somehow I'm still here
through sheer cleverness.  But I make mistakes and there is so little power left now at
the end that I must be shrewd and watch them like a lioness watching a herd of gazelles

Suppose I was more agreeable
Instead of arguing over coffee about politics, religion
All those subjects deemed taboo that neither of us truly give a **** about
Pressing my point like daggers against your ribcage
Knowing the sweet spots that make you moan
I would give in, applaud your cleverness, then leave for work

You would be left wondering if you should feel insulted.

of course you should

As usual,my filterless memoirs have become vocalized
******* them back in tight and quick is useless
Once freed, the damage is done

But. they. are . just. words.

the previous statement is ridiculous and the author should be shot

Never could I slice you deeper, **** your private mind or lay your soul bare
Then with the bitter, caustic, truthful edge of my observations
You are just as vulnerable as the rest of them
Barbed wire telegrams
Frozen emails
Ash and arsenic letters
Cut you to the quick

Delightful.
But I like it better when I can witness the damage
Basking in the upper handed afterglow of my superior ability to mortally wound
For no bit of silver that I've ever found
Was ever sharper than the razor edge of my tongue

I'm a fox walking around a loaded gun.
I stare into your cold eyes,
And I don't know when to run,
As I stare into my own demise.

I'm a fox waiting around a loaded gun,
Being mocked for my cleverness and wit,
And I'm desperately trying to run,
But I can't plan the timing of it.

I'm a fox running around a loaded gun,
Didn't mean to get myself into this trick,
And as I begin to run,
I hear the gun click.

At school I had trouble socializing,
And still, The Owl, comes all too late?

My formative years are spent deep within caves searching,
Yet The Owl is never found there?

The failures and sadness accumulate over time,
Leaving The Owl traversing some other’s sky,

I feel life slipping away each day,
And still The Owl never manifests!

Where is The Owl? Does it not come with time?
Will cleverness induce her, perhaps woo her with rhyme?

Quell restless mind, The Owl reforge me so I’m freed!
Grant me your talons so that I may succeed!

And still, The Owl, who never manifests,
And still The Owl never manifests.

I curl chalky fingers into travertine-grip,
Aged ruin takes a hold, in my despair as I slip,

Sans which The Owl never did manifest,
To wit, sans The Owl, pounding sand as I jest,

So what, The Owl, never did manifest?
And still The Owl never manifests.

Life without The Owl, was no life at all,
No solemnity of greatness, a life of doltish pit-fall.

And still The Owl never manifests.
And still The Owl never manifests.

Can you help some one who's ill

When you know it's not physical

It hides in his oblivious mind

Cleverness making it hard to find

I tried to confront it he won't admit

He knows how to hide behind all his wit

Family and friends don't know how to deal

As his frustrating anger is so hard to feel

Enabled because they cannot cope

He intimidates their need for hope

He has no courage within his own heart

Denial keeps him from falling apart

Unable to admit a possible weakness

It's buried within his own sneakiness

When in reality if he could only see

The more courageous he would be

To face his fears and set himself free

O' Casey had been told where the meeting was
senior members of the IRA would attend
he didn't know and thought that MI6 would be there
duped into assassination was a dangerous masterstroke
others knew that he was dissatisfied with the hierarchy
so if it transpired, he would be a likely target
If the real resaon was found, they would never forget
the old mainland action would be re-ignited
and the Brits cleverness found to be short-sighted
the peace process was a sham, arms locked away
Adams and McGuinness in suits, smug faces
while they postulated and mixed in high places
'You realize what were doing?' The ***** said
'Rather, let them carry on with their empty head.'

smile…… Manipulate…..complements ...... Manipulate……act interested……manipulate…..show some tears….. manipulate…….white lies….manipulate…..it’s a drug, to manipulate….flirt and manipulate…. escape pain or consequence…manipulate …..socially acceptable to manipulate…to get what you deserve…manipulate….to get what you want….manipulate……to change some one’s mind manipulate…..to be successful manipulate …..O i hate manipulation! i rather have paid every speeding ticket, stood in every long line, gone to jail, paid more than full price for everything, not got the job and been broke…..never been kissed…failed at everything….then to have ever manipulated in my life! O God i hate manipulation and it’s subtleness.. a quiet vice…a secret soul killer…. Call it what you will….swag….cleverness….success…..it doesn’t matter manipulation wears any Word you choose…it’s all self-centered…. me me me me me….. hehehehe…..stop!!!!…. Manipulation must die! Especially in its most subtle and acceptable forms. Even if i have to struggle…even if i lose everything…it must die…”those who save there live will lose it, those lose their lives will find it…………Christ guide me

You found me.

You're so clever,
You're so mysterious,
So cunning and coy.
You hide and sneak,
Laugh and giggle.
You grin with knowledge
And my lack thereof.

But I have the real secret,
I'm sly and crafty,
Sneaky and hidden
In my openness and observations.
More so because my secrets,
stay secret...

I know you better
Than you may believe.
I love you more
Than you can understand.
So I will stay hidden
In my open observations.
I will stay and silent
My crafty cleverness.
I want to be a secret.

You are my secret.
I'll be your's.
You found me.

At the world’s edge,
Upon a steep ledge,
I must ask the everchanging blue:
Why must I fall in love with them?

Whereupon, I break bread
With my enemies
I must ask the everchanging red:
Why must I fall in love with them?

Again, and again,
It is a dinner that ever ends
It’s the common place of disaster
A comedy of manners
Drenched in sinister designs
Beyond the grinds
Of my understanding
Of the world

It’s the Theatre of the Deranged
Laughter
So much laughter
And I don’t know what they’re after
I’m the jester
Without a wry disguise
Cleverness beneath comedic idiocy
I’m the fool
In this Theatre of the Deranged

Discussions at a lopsided table
Where only those who obey the master
May talk – all else must listen
To her, to her, to her!
Gorged on foods
I never wanted
There is nothing sweet
Left for me to eat

Mouth sealed shut
Except to laugh
But there’s nothing funny
When you’re the joke
That’s gone on too long
But the party is far from over
When you’re the court jester
To the Queen who rules the world
To the King who rules the world
To the Jack who rules the world
To the Ace who rules the world
To the suit who rules the world
To the world who rules the world

To the monarchs who uphold
The declarations of entertainment
And attend the gathering
At the edge of the world
Adorned with velvet curtains
And velvet lies
In a swirling and everchanging
Red and blue
Known only as
The Theatre of the Deranged

Author's Note:

This piece is not an accusation.
It is a meditation on the invisible processes that hollow men from within, until dignity itself becomes foreign to them.

It was written out of love for what could still be restored—
and sorrow for what has already been surrendered.

It speaks not just to the fallen,
but to every soul tempted to trade courage for comfort, or brotherhood for collusion.

Its aim is simple:

To remember what is still worth standing for.

To remember what dignity feels like.

To remember that one man, rising rightly, can still light a thousand silent fires.


This is not a call to fight against anyone.
It is a call to rise for something greater.

And that rising always begins alone—
but never ends alone.

---

I. The Quiet Death of Courage

Cowardice rarely announces itself.
It does not charge the city gates or tear down banners.
It does not raise its fist or shout in the streets.

It simply withdraws.

A little at a time:

A small silence when truth could have been spoken.

A small appeasement when resistance was needed.

A small betrayal of the self, justified as "wisdom," or "timing," or "strategy."


Cowardice is the art of dying in small increments.

It is a death invisible at first—
but felt all the same,
especially by those who still remember what life tasted like.

---

II. The Architecture of Collapse

A man does not become a coward all at once.

It happens in stages:

1. The First Silence

At first, he says nothing when he should have spoken.
He tells himself it was prudence.
He convinces himself that silence was strength.

It was not.

It was the first small surrender of the ground within him.

---

2. The Second Betrayal

Next, he acts against his own spirit—
not because he is coerced,
but because he seeks the approval of the small and the fearful.

He trades his birthright for belonging.

---

3. The Third Rationalization

Then he builds a philosophy around his collapse.
He calls cowardice "compassion."
He calls compromise "wisdom."
He calls retreat "strategy."

He must call it something,
for he can no longer bear to call it what it is.

---

4. The Fourth Contagion

Finally, he evangelizes his collapse.

He cannot stand to be alone in his shrinking.
He must make others shrink too, so that his own fall will seem normal.

He calls cynicism "truth."
He calls bitterness "clarity."
He calls betrayal "maturity."

And so the infection spreads.

---

III. The Hallmarks of the Cowardly Spirit

What does the cowardly spirit look like once matured?

It has specific, predictable characteristics:

It ridicules what it secretly envies.

It mocks beauty, calling it naiveté.

It mistrusts love, calling it weakness.

It punishes hope wherever it finds it.

It colludes quickly with other cowards, for it cannot endure the mirror of a brave soul.


Most of all,
it refuses to stand alone in anything noble.

It will only move
when surrounded by a sufficient crowd of accomplices,
all murmuring together that cowardice is, after all,
"just the way the world works."

---

IV. The Consequences: The Inheritance of the Cowardly Spirit

The coward believes his failures die with him.

They do not.

Every surrender of the soul plants a seed—
and what the coward will not face, the next generation must.

Cowardice is not content to remain private.
It leaks. It spreads.
It builds hidden systems of decay in places meant to be sacred:

Brotherhood.

Family.

Love.

Trust.


Here, we observe the inevitable fruits of the coward’s hidden betrayals:

---

1. The Poisoning of Brotherhood

The coward cannot abide true brotherhood, for it demands loyalty to something higher than himself.

Where brotherhood calls men to rise, he calls them to collude.
Where brotherhood builds strength, he breeds resentment and small betrayals.

True brotherhood requires courage:

The courage to tell the truth.

The courage to stand beside the fallen and help them rise.

The courage to call out wrong even when it costs everything.


The coward, unwilling to bear these costs, transforms brotherhood into mob-hood.
It becomes not a place of strengthening, but a collective graveyard of broken wills.

---

2. The Contamination of the Vulnerable

The coward is not content to rot alone.
He must gather others into his decay — especially those still innocent enough to hope.

He mocks hope as naiveté.
He redefines loyalty as silence.
He teaches the young that the only safety lies in cynicism, deceit, and crowd protection.

Thus, the cowardly spirit perpetuates itself—
turning the next generation of seekers into scavengers.

The vulnerable, robbed of examples of true dignity, inherit nothing but confusion and despair.

The sins the coward would not confess
become the legacies his sons and daughters must carry.

---

3. The Formation of the System

When enough cowards gather,
their private collapses harden into public systems.

It is no longer just a man here, or a man there.
It is a construct—a culture.

A place where cowardice is normal,
where betrayal is cleverness,
where faithfulness is mocked,
where mercy is treated as weakness.

The system becomes self-perpetuating—
enforced not by dictators, but by the small daily collusions of those too afraid to stand.

And thus, without ever firing a shot,
cowardice conquers the city.

Not with weapons.
But with withdrawal.
With silence.
With the endless failure to love rightly when it was hardest to love.

---

V. The Restoration: The Only Way Back

There is no shortcut out of cowardice.

There is no clever argument that can restore dignity to a man who has surrendered it.

There is only one way back:

The man must choose to stand again—alone if necessary—before the gaze of God and truth.

---

1. The Necessity of Aloneness

To be restored, the man must abandon the crowd.
He must leave behind the murmuring alliances of smallness that once comforted him.

He must stand naked in the light of reality:

Without excuse.

Without camouflage.

Without borrowed dignity.


He must see himself as he truly is—
not as the victim of circumstance,
but as a willing participant in his own ruin.

This is why restoration begins with loneliness.

Because dignity cannot be borrowed.
It must be reborn.

---

2. The Cost of Repentance

True repentance is not an apology to the crowd.

It is an apology to the soul he abandoned.
An apology to the Source he betrayed.
An apology to the ones he harmed by his absence of courage.

Repentance is not a performance.
It is a slow rebuilding—
stone by stone, day by day—
of a life that will no longer lie.

It is the refusal to be a man whose silence feeds decay.
It is the refusal to call cowardice "wisdom" just because it is popular.

It is the willingness to lose everything false
in order to gain one thing true.

---

3. The Unfolding Strength

As the man stands,
he will feel at first as though he is dying.

And in a way, he is.
The part of him that survived by submission is perishing.

But what rises in its place
is something the system of cowards has no weapon against:

A man who can no longer be bought.
A man who can no longer be frightened.
A man who, even alone, even broken, refuses to bow to lies.

One such man
can dismantle the machinery of cowardice
simply by breathing differently.

---

4. The Lineage of New Fire

When one man stands rightly,
he gives birth to a lineage.

He shows others what it looks like to stop surrendering.
He awakens those still sleeping in their excuses.

He does not have to preach loudly.
He does not have to prove anything.

His existence becomes a rebellion.
His faithfulness becomes an invitation.
His dignity becomes a seedbed for the rebirth of brotherhood.

He becomes a true elder.
A true warrior.
A true builder of sacred things.

He becomes a man who no longer merely survives—
but who lives.

---

And so the story turns:

The cowardly system is dismantled
not by greater violence,
not by harsher words,
but by the silent rising of men and women
who refuse to live any longer beneath their birthright.

They will not key the beauty they envy.
They will not scavenge the ruins.
They will not mock what they are too small to understand.

They will build.
They will love.
They will stand.

They will remember:
that heaven was always meant to be built from blood, yes—
but also from breath, and bone, and unbreakable fire.

And so they will live,
not because they were the strongest,
but because they were the most faithful.

And I really do mean men.  And mostly white men.
I learned that at Columbia film school
In LA, at USC, all those male filmmakers were somewhat suspect
What they made, could not often be called "art" but even worse
they tended to extreme geekines
They wore ***** athletic shoes everywhere and spent long hours on sets
in t-shirts, wearing caps with the name of their film on them and not smelling particularly fresh
They were not particularly athletic in a city that sport "muscle beach."
But here, they were MEN.  They could hold their own in any test of masculinity
as art is a serious undertaking, and requires great powers of the intellect
And here, where most life is spent indoors, the men dressed well,
in proper leather shoes that had names, and followed the fashion of the bohemian moment
which was not considered bad, maybe because you need clothes so much there
You are always freezing or sweltering and sweating.  You freeze outside in winter
and you sweat when you come indoors.  In the summer you boil outside in hot
and air conditioned New York, like you are in purgatory, and then freeze again in the air conditioning
To have that artistic authority, no woman can come close
It isn't a woman's world, at least in the early nineties in New York, it wasn't
Such a dissapointment for me since I thought I could somehow slip through by sheer cleverness
It's like a black person hoping to be identified as white.  It can't be done.
There was a place for me, like no matter where I hid in a cinematography class
in the front, middle or back I always became the woman who is photographed
to demonstrate lighting
"You learn the most up here" said Beta Badka, in a thick Ukrainian accent as he set me on a stool
But that's not where I wanted to be
I longed to be taken seriously, telling stories about women, about girls
and having them be respected with that same cache
that came with stories of men

I am learning the art of forgetting.
I am learning the art of letting go.

I am rising. I smash at you like high tide. Reminiscing about our tidal waves and yard arms, wrapped around our throats like business suit neckties. You see, I got lost, one more time, in our complicated little world and remembered that womb is not synonymous with ****. But rather with mother. And we played house together awhile. While the moon peeled off half it's dress. And I laughed at your 3rd grade poetry. And we regretted nothing, like Edith Piaf, on your couch, in the dark, entering worlds we'd torn apart.

It is worth mentioning that you were the first to ask me to your bed, rather than taken to mine, which proved prophecy wrong and wrong and wrong.

I was waiting for the kiss, like crimson stains, to ask me to say. But we muted them with burgundy.

I was willing to pay.
I was willing to show you.

But instead, we let wine separate us and bottle us up in action we didn't take, corking something perfect now, with the lie that it will be better in time. And I bought it.

Like hands raised in prayer.

And kissed oceans off of your cheeks, one.. salty.. drop.. at a time.

That was our crime.

And you. You came back, figuring you could pollute my stream. A virus set about my heart, freezing me like cold wet days when the wind cuts like goodbye. Come to sound yourself like a siren. But I can't hear your song. It no longer plays on my ears. I have forced it back into the foam that crests the waves and have drown myself in flesh and flesh.

So go ahead. Go ahead.

And we. We would have our night and it would drive you to an assumptive dissidence. Our harmony corrupted. Now an awkward, fumbling minor chord. Bleating like a lamb to slaughter.

I never wanted your soul.

I just wanted you not to leave right after we'd arrived.

Which is becoming less and less true as I run out the lines on my face and hands.

I wanted one, just one, to be there in the morning and then gone.

But I am folly.

And Gods teeth shake like parishioners in a collapsing church as I find my way back to the ******* poet I've become.

Consider these words like mercury, temperature rising.

And how I have made mistakes.

In darkened deserts. In hands on small of backs. In rain littered parking lots. Fireside. Ringside. In cold, cold water. In cleverness. In repeated attempts. In repeated attempts. Inrepeatedattempts.

I have made mistakes.

But take me in spite of my faults, Love.

Just until dawn. But be careful. Dawn breaks so easily. So lay quiet with me.

When the sun fills this echo chamber it will translate all this rich to ruin. My staggering meter to a retched stumble. And how should I finish? With a dying fall as my mentor would have me? Ragged claws and turpentine? No.

You see, I am more now than I was before.

And yet, I have never been what I could be.

Don't.

Don't let go.

Lest I forget.

Written by Serge Kahili King

There is a famous *Zen koan (philosophical riddle) which asks,

"What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

The student of Zen is supposed to meditate on this riddle until some degree of insight or enlightenment occurs. *The tricky part is that there is no right answer. What you are, or what you know, or what you believe, is what you get.

Although no longer an active student of Zen, I was recently meditating of the riddle of one hand clapping when I got an answer that might be useful to share:

The sound of one hand clapping is the same as the sound of two hands clapping.

How could that be, you ask (for the sake of this article
I am assuming that you do ask)? It's simple, I reply.
The concept of clapping implies that a sound is being produced by two surfaces coming into contact, even if only one of them is actually moving.
No sound, no clapping; no second surface, no sound. Yet, the riddle definitely states that there is a sound and that there is clapping.

Therefore, my answer follows logically.

Yes, I know, the answer to a koan is supposed to be beyond logic, but rest assured that the answer came intuitively. The logic came after.

Before you dismiss this as simply a bit of cleverness or a waste of time, let me tell you about the rest of the meditation. After the revelation that the sound of one hand clapping must be the same as the sound of two hands clapping, it struck me that this was a nice metaphor for two of the corollaries of the Second Principle of Huna.

The basic principle states that there are no limits, which implies that everything is in a relationship to everything else. And that implies that if you change one side of a relationship you change both sides.Even if only one hand changes its position relative to another, unmoving hand , a clapping sound will be produced.

We don't have to wait for both sides of a relationship to participate before bringing about beneficial change.
Change one side of that relationship and the other side has to change because the relationship has changed.

We use this idea a lot in teaching Huna.
For instance, in third-level healing work where we assume that

everything is a dream and everything is dreaming, we say that
~ if you change one dream you automatically change all related dreams.

So you can go to an imaginary garden and make changes to symbols of your life experience, and your life experience will change.

In second-level healing work where we assume that
everything is telepathically linked, we say that
~ if you begin to silently bless and forgive people with whom you are having difficulties, they will know it and they will begin to change their behavior toward you without a word being spoken.

And in first level healing, where
we assume that everything is separate but potentially interactive,
we teach that
~ if you smile and hug a lot you will tend to get a lot more smiles and hugs back, even from people who don't normally smile or hug.

Now what do you think would happen if you applied this idea to the whole of your life?

In a strained personal relationship, for example, instead of waiting for the other person to make the first move toward reconciliation you could start the process in your own mind, either by purposely creating a better opinion of the other person, or by imagining the two of you getting along with all of your differences.  Sorry, you can't control with your imagination what the other person thinks or does (it simply doesn't work), but you can use imagined persuasion just as you might in a face to face meeting. As in any form of persuasion, however, the more your persuasion is based on a benefit to the other person, the more successful it is likely to be.

In a strained global relationship, assuming our theory is valid
(which means workable). We might be able to get together even in a smallish group and and rethink ((or redream)) our relationship with one or both countries involved. Theoretically, of course, it ought to take only one person to make a change. On the other hand, the change of one person's relationship to a country might only produce a very small change, so the more people the better. The thing to remember, in this context, is that you are trying to change how you think or feel about the country, not trying to change the country. It's a subtle but important difference, and it applies to people as well as countries.

If this idea catches on we can introduce  "a Huna koan" ((the actual Hawaiian phrase is "nane huna," a hidden riddle or conundrum))

*"What is the sound of one person loving?"

From the kingdom of death thou wildly run,
as though to die not; as though all shall be fun.
Even though thou might not be as fine as mine,
And hesitate once not, like many other minds.
Under the staggering sun thou art the sun itself;
Unlike the universe any mortal shall never have.
To thee but heaven shall never be adequate,
To thee whom fate shall not mind; but dare not ever bend.
Thou, who deemeth everything is futile and late;
Thou, who hath neither words nor poetry in thy hand.
Thou art at times like a piece of youthful innocent art,
Which amorous feeble hands long to tear apart.
Like a flower t'at grows on the window behind the curtain,
Thou shall return to youth, and be younger-every now and then;
For with thy playfulness thou shall bitterly mock Determination;
Whilst thy childishness shall help thee dream of, and silently miss Salvation.

And whenst all t'is business is to say goodbye;
Thou shall still stay, forever and never die.
For thou art undead, and forever and ever immortal,
No stab canst wound thee, as no torpid wound of thine fatal.
Thou art a fatal prince-yes, a wicked, wicked heir;
Heir of cheerfulness-of a soul so full of spirits yet fairness.
Ah! And so thus thou shall leave behind not t'is worldly affair,
Thou shall be eternally bent upon it, and makest of it, thy happiness.
And when at the very end, all dead souls should awaken and retaliate,
Thou shall stay calmly and twitch not by heaven's wooden gate.
Thy agelessness is a mirage no blunt living soul can afford;
Thou art infallible, unlike the decrees of our dear Lord,
For thou shall never dwell among a thousand earths
And be lain among lilies and roses yonder, of irrevocable green hearth.
Thou art, in any midst of grievousness, cold with mirth;
When there is no more born thou art blessed with anew, birth.

Thus thou art forever unsinned, and shall be so gullible;
Thou art an adult inside; 'spite appearing so weak and feeble.
People canst, by thy comely appearance, fall deaf and misunderstand,
Thinking thee a ruddy friend; a robust and sincere fellow.
But thou art indeed, and in truth-a witty and good-hearted man,
As bold and ever unhesitant, but caring and good-willed, as tomorrow.
Thy naivety thus fights against, and befalls any mercilessness,
Thy delight is but our timid society's frank joyfulness.
And every song is benignly rooted in the delicacy of thy tongue,
To whom thy streams of love, as well as hate, shall belong.
But again, more and more loving hearts shall complain-
For when they fade and ought to disappear; thou shall firmly remain.
And duly thou defeat for evermore any tainted miserable heart,
Especially hearts that hath no beat when they supposedly beat, and are alive.
For thy heart is as fresh, and inevitable-like a solitary work of art,
But innocent and intelligent-like a young sword; or the neat blade, of a cold knife.

So whatever love claims to be love-which is too proud, though clear and sanguine;
Is not at all, or by any chance-pure, tolerable, nor delightfully keen;
For love is not the same as pleasure-as pleasure is not love,
Love is the one no senses canst touch-nor for pride move.
Ah, thee, we canst but teach thee more lessons of love itself;
For there are more than our anxious souls canst tell;
Love is not something t'at canst one satisfy, nor is for one to drink;
For any to satisfy or drink is yon that makes oneself sink.
I figurest above are imminent to thy knowing;
For thou shall still mature more; and be independent in thy living.
For family is still more essential than any money or gold;
To which we humans oftentimes too sternly hold.
Ah, but thy journey is still upwards and steep as a hill;
An endlessness our mortality is but too scared to feel.
So be wise and fill thyself with rich wisdom likewise;
And as thy findeth bitterness on due roads-turn to poetry, and seek its advice.

And so to thee hath a world of supremacy be assigned,
So thus I entreat-t'at be with thee all the reciprocal goodness-and dexterity!
Ah, and by thy cleverness shall all be mutually aligned,
For naive thou art still, about the very course of extremity!
But severity shall not burden thee, as to thy endurance and good will,
Thy willingness to share, and rely and lean on how such fellows feel.
Thou refilleth 'em always, with endless and plentiful splendours,
Thou cheereth 'eir minutes, and stay comely at all 'eir breathing hours.
As every single day's dates themselves, thou art undeniable;
Thou art real in thy eternity, though sometimes unbelievable;
Thou art worth all the bogs who are so merrily singing-
Thou art so graceful, thou art everything!
As in both reality and dreams thou art present,
Thou who art obscure; but coincidentally, sharp and inherent!
Ah, thee, thus I hope t'at every poem-such as t'is, shall make thee even more truthful;
For poetry itself is relief; and our most reliable urge to be brave, and thoughtful.

Every day I see this guy pass by my door,
he never steps off the path.
His hair speaks of his woe.
His steel eyes arrange the sky into a box,
the blue is not enough to keep him idle,
he requires the chains of logic.
It keeps him grounded when he could be flying.

“Why should I fly,” he says,
“It’s much too cold for me anyway.”
“Wear a jacket” I might declare.
He would reply, “I don’t wish to sweat through
my sensible clothes.”
(Only twenty dollars on sale.)

He is much too sensible to be any fun,
but fun is not all there is.
“There is science” he would suggest
If we ever were to talk,
I know he would be an excellent conversationalist

His dusty shoes tell of his wariness,
His jacket of his adventures.
(He keeps dust on his clothes to speak for his cleverness.)

“Conversation is for the simple-minded,” he would say.
“I prefer books,” would be my reply.

He would have nothing to say then,
(He doesn’t like conversation anyway.)
but he’d be too logical to let me know
Of his human blunder and illogical flash.
So he spoke to me of his action figure collection.
(“Most extensive, I’m sure”)